Posts Tagged: bees
December farm stories
Davis Wednesday afternoon farmers' market can be quiet in December, so what better time to learn a little about what's going on back at the farms? Every farmer I talked with today had delicious treats to sell and a story to tell. Here are a few:
The fuzzy green fruit for sale today from Stenzel's Kiwi Farm was harvested late in October and has been held in cold storage at 32 degrees since then. The fruit will last about six months stored this way, allowing Stenzel to bring out what he needs, grade it by size, let it ripen a little, but sell it while it's still firm. When you bring your kiwis home, let them ripen three or four days more for the best flavor.
Give it a try - visit your local winter farmers market and learn some new stories!
To find farmers' markets in your community, visit the UC small farm program's California Agriculture Tourism Directory.
UC scientists target digger bee pollination ecology, conservation
Co-principal investigators of the $24,000 grant are Neal Williams, assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology, and Jocelyn Millar, professor of entomology at UC Riverside.
The grant is spearheaded by evolutionary ecologist Leslie Saul-Gershenz, a Ph.D. student in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and co-founder of SaveNature.Org.
“[Our project] will help to protect this important pollinator by providing land managers with crucial information on its nesting requirements, to help reduce the impacts from land development and high-impact recreational use,” she said. “Our work will focus on species from the bee species-rich Mojave Desert ecosystem to the coastal dunes in Oregon.”
Saul-Gershenz researches a species of digger bee, Habropoda pallida, a solitary ground-nesting bee, and its nest parasite, a blister beetle, Meloe franciscanus.
The researchers also will study the mechanisms that "mediate the interaction between digger bees and a wide-ranging nest parasite known to parasitize multiple pollinator species," Saul-Gershenz said. "Such information could help to mitigate potential impacts on important pollinators."
The price of chicken feed is rising
Director of the UC Agricultural Issues Center Daniel Sumner told the reporter that rising costs for poultry producers will boost the retail price, unless something else acts to keep prices down.
"So, bottom line," Sumner said, "we should see higher retail prices with these high grain and oilseed prices."
Ranchers beef over obstacles to local meat
Carlos Alcalá, Sacramento Bee
Small ranchers in El Dorado County gathered at a Local Meat Summit in Placerville last week to discuss obstacles to selling their products locally. Meat must be harvested at a USDA-approved facility, and there aren't many of those.
Program representative Sean Kriletich of UC Cooperative Extension in Amador and Calaveras counties is working with ranchers to solve the problem.
"We're trying to work toward getting a USDA-inspected facility for our region," Kriletich said.
If more small ranchers can find a way to sell grass-fed beef locally, it will do more than benefit the farmers, Kriletich said. It will preserve open space for the entire community.
"If people want to keep more land in agriculture, we have to get more money to the producers," said Kriletich, who said he used to run cattle himself, where El Dorado Hills subdivisions now sit.
Beekeepers asking Humboldt cities to loosen regulations on residential hives
Grant Scott-Goforth, The Willits News
A recent change in attitudes toward urban sustainability and education about bee culture spurred the Humboldt County Beekeepers Association to ask the cities of Arcata and Eureka to loosen restrictions on residential beekeeping.
UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Deborah Giraud said the risks of keeping bees in residential areas are minimal. ”In general, it's really important to have more honeybees,” Giraud said. “We have a lot of problems with pollination here because of weather. Most calls in here are about fruit trees. And it's a pollination problem.”
Lack of pollination due to insecticide use affects onion seed yields, study finds
A lack of pollination by honey bees — brought on by increased insecticide use to control onion thrips — was linked to a sharp decrease in yields of California onion seeds, according to research published in the July-September 2011 issue of the University of California’s California Agriculture journal.
“Honey bee visits to onion flowers were negatively correlated with the number of insecticides applied per field and field size,” wrote the study’s authors, Rachael F. Long of UC Cooperative Extension in Yolo County and Lora Morandin of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. “Reduced onion seed yields in recent years could be associated with the increase in insecticide use, which may be repelling or killing honey bees, important pollinators of this crop.”
The research was conducted in May and June 2009, in 13 commercial hybrid onion seed production fields in Yolo and Sacramento counties. At each of six sampling sites per field, the researchers observed the numbers and types of insects visiting onion flowers that were potential pollinators of onions. To assess onion seed yields relative to insect pollinator activity, they collected onion umbels from the sampling sites and counted the seeds to obtain average yield data. Ground mapping was done around each field to determine whether other preferred floral resources were available to honey bees, perhaps luring them away from onion flowers.
Onion thrips were previously of minor importance in onion seed production. However, iris yellow spot virus is a new pathogen for California onions that is vectored by onion thrips, and it can cause significant onion seed yield losses if left unmanaged. The insecticides used by growers at these field sites to control onion thrips included spinosad, spinetoram, methomyl, cypermethrin, lambda-cyhalothrin and sodium tetraborohydrate decahydrate. The number of insecticides applied per field ranged from one to seven, including tank mixes, with all pesticides applied prebloom. The number of bee hives per acre ranged from four to 14, with the exception of one field that had resident hives at 42 per acre.
“This study found that the number of insecticides applied and field size were the strongest predictors of honey bee activity and onion seed yields,” the authors wrote.
Long and Morandin cautioned that to confirm a causal relationship, more information is needed on the specific effects of different classes and rates of insecticides on honey bee activity. In addition, cultivar can play a role in honey bee activity and needs to be further investigated with respect to pesticide use and bee activity.
“Our study suggests that growers should exercise caution when using insecticides, applying them only when needed as opposed to preemptively, to better protect both wild and honey bee pollinators,” the authors wrote. “Also, the negative correlation between field size and honey bee activity suggests that spreading honey bee colonies around onion fields rather than grouping them may increase honey bee activity and pollination in larger fields.”
Onion seed is primarily grown in Colusa County and the Imperial Valley on about 2,000 acres. The value of the seeds is $12 million to growers, according to agricultural commissioner county crop reports, and they generate an additional $40 million in subsequent retail sales.
“While clearly a specialty, small-acreage crop, onion seed production is important to the rural economies in California where onion seed is primarily grown,” Long and Morandin noted.
Rachael Long monitors pollinator activity in a hybrid onion seed field. Honey bee hives (foreground) are placed in fields to promote pollination. (Photo: Edwin Reidel)
No explanation yet for mysterious bee deaths
Even though scientists have been studying colony collapse disorder of honeybees for five years, the relentless bee mortality still has them mystified, according to a segment that aired on PBS' NewsHour yesterday.
"We really don't seem to have accomplished a whole lot, because we're still losing, on an average, approximately 30 percent or more of our colonies each year. And that's higher than it used to be," UC Cooperative Extension bee expert Eric Mussen told reporter Spencer Michels. "Only 25 percent of the beekeepers seem to have this CCD problem over and over and over. The other 75 percent have their fingers crossed and say, I don't know what this is, but it's not happening to me."
Michels outlined some of the research into the possible causes of persistent bee decline. At UC Davis, scientists are trying to find ways to improve bee health by changing what they eat and selectively breeding healthier, disease-resistant bees. At UC San Francisco, scientists are extracting DNA or RNA from healthy bees to analyze what viruses or bacteria are present.
"We found four new viruses in this study, and one of them was so frequent, there was more of that virus present than every other virus that we have know about put together," said UCSF's Charles Runckel.
A beekeeper featured in the program said he maintains healthy bee colonies by keeping them "forever young." Randy Oliver splits his hives every year, taking half the bees out and starting a new hive.
"That simple act of splitting gives the bees a fresh start. And, in nature, that's what they do. Bees -- bees reproduce frequently. They swarm every spring, and they give themselves fresh starts. And that's what beekeepers are tending to do, too," Oliver explained.
PBS